Election Integrity Watchdog Finds California Lost 10.9 Million Mail-In Ballots in 2022 Midterms

An election integrity group said 10.9 million out of a total 22.1 million ballots that had been mailed out to registered voters during the 2022 midterm elections went “unaccounted for,” According to a Jan. 18 Report.

“Mail voting practices have an insurmountable information gap,” The Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), Monday. “The public cannot know how many ballots were disregarded, delivered to wrong mailboxes, or even withheld from the proper recipient by someone at the same address.”

The watchdog released The report is two pages longpdf(details what it was called “the failures” Of California’s first mass-mail balloting election following the passage of Assembly Bill 37 (AB 37), which requires that ballots automatically be mailed to all active registered voters statewide. The bill signed into law By Gov. Gavin Newsom, September 20, 211, makes vote-by mail ballots permanent, a practice that was implemented in 2020 in conjunction with the COVID-19 pandemic.

California has the highest number of registered voters in any state. Yet its vote-by-mail policies—among the nation’s most expansive—have resulted in large numbers of ballots “disappearing at poll closing time,” PILF’s data show.

“After accounting for polling place votes and rejected ballots in November 2022, there were more than 10 million ballots left outstanding, meaning election officials do not know what happened to them,” Read the Wednesday report.

“It is fair to assume that the bulk of these were ignored or ultimately thrown out by the intended recipients. But, under mass-mail elections, we can only assume what happened,” It went on.

Besides the almost half unaccounted-for mail ballots, data show that 9.8 million were accepted, over 120,000 were rejected, and 1.4 million were counted from in-person voting centers.

The Golden State, which has been a Democratic stronghold for over two decades, mailed out more than 22.1 million ballots to its registered voters—nearly 47 percent Democrats and 24 percent Republicans—during the 2022 elections. The GOP won in California on November 16 and has slim control over the U.S. House.

Mail-In Ballot Rejects

After finding out that 226,250 California election officials had rejected PILF’s request, PILF decided to investigate. mail-in ballots during the 2022 primary and general elections, argued that the switch to mail balloting has taken away voters’ rights.

According to the report the state would reject mail ballots for nine reasons.

Researchers found that the most common reason is “endemic to mail voting,” turned out to be late-arriving ballots—taking up 48 percent of all rejects during the 2022 elections, finding show.

Each registered voter in California should be mailed a ballot one month before Election Day. All ballots returned by mail must be postmarked by Nov. 8 to be counted, and received within seven days by county election officials, who would then verify the signatures on the return envelopes and process ballots through their vote tallying system.

“In the November contests, more than 57,000 ballots arrived after November 15, setting them up for rejection,” PILF was declared.

“The official datasets do not differentiate between ballots postmarked too late or delivered too late. The U.S. Postal Service also touts its 2022 performance by claiming that 99 percent of mail ballots were delivered nationally within 3 days to officials for counting once in their custody,” The repost states that the Post Office set the success rate at 94% for timely delivery of political mail.

“So the failure to deliver ballots on time is not surprising.”

 

After they arrive at Sacramento County Registrar of Voters (Sacramento, Calif.) on Oct. 22, 2018, the mail-in ballots will be placed in bins that will be processed. (Rich Pedroncelli/AP Photo)

J. Christian Adams, President of PILF, agrees that mail in ballots can be used. “disenfranchise” voters.

“There are many reasons mail ballots fail ultimately to count. No one casting a ballot at home can correct an error before it’s too late,” The chairman stated. “California’s vote-by-mail demonstration should serve as a warning to state legislators elsewhere.”

Mail-in ballots could still be counted in cases where a postmark is damaged or not legible. However, this will depend on the circumstances. Californians will be able to bring their ballots in person to the polling station or drop them off in an official box under the new legislation.

The Epoch Times has reached out to the California secretary of state’s office and Newsom’s office for comment.